


by Asclepius

by wreathed



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Ficlet, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: Summer, 1988. Will Coningham is taken ill at Rose Hill.For the@terror_exeprompt:dr stanley/james fitzjames, family, pre-relationship, slow drunk sex.
Relationships: Commander James Fitzjames/Dr Stephen S. Stanley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: @terror_exe Flash Fest





	by Asclepius

They’re barely a week into Will’s long-anticipated return from Eton to Rose Hill for the summer when his weak constitution manifests itself, and so the private physician who has been treating Will for as long as James can remember has once again been telephoned by Robert and Louisa, ever-anxious over the vitality of their only biological son.

Silent in his white wool cricket socks, James pads along the corridor to Will’s room; a room he’s been deemed too boisterous to enter for the time being. Through the half-open door, James is relieved to see that Will is pale and sheened in sweat but conscious, propped up in his bed by a tower of pillows. One of the doctor’s considerable hands presses perfunctory at Will’s jaw so that he may remove the thermometer from Will’s mouth.

Doctor Stanley has by circumstance been a regular presence in James’s life yet remains wholly unfamiliar, and so to James appears foreboding but intriguing: he is as deferential, albeit curt, to James as would be appropriate for the ward of the man paying him an enormous amount of money, but quite plainly holds absolutely no interest in James and his life whatsoever.

Stanley shows due politeness to the Coninghams, but has never been known to make conversation, and James has not once seen him smile. Along with his esoteric way of speaking and his stern countenance, he puts James in mind of one of his old Latin masters, which seems a troublesome comparison in itself considering he hadn’t managed the focus to learn very much Latin at all.

“If you were to stay overnight, just to make sure,” Louisa is saying in a quiet voice, hidden from James’s view. “Under the usual remunerative terms, needless to say.”

“Of course,” Stanley replies.

James leaves before he is found loitering, and is left with little to do but fidget in his own room and wait. He considers going downstairs to phone Dundy or Graham, but the evening grows late and he knows Robert won’t have it. He puts in a Pet Shop Boys cassette and plays it crashingly loudly until Louisa politely appears to ask him with all of her infinite patience to cease. 

He finds a three-quarters-full dusty bottle of rum at the back of his bedside cabinet and, as he unscrews the cap, amuses himself imagining what it would be like to be a pirate.

*

Barefooted this time, James makes for the room next to Will’s that had once belonged to their nanny. He aims for his journey there to be as quiet as his sneaking around a few hours previous, but achieving this is more difficult now he finds his balance to some degree unsteady.

On the way there, he fears the billow of his pale cotton blazer, the slightness of his frame lost in the sea of it, may have been a mistake. Perhaps he should roll down the sleeves.

Laughing nervously, James opens the door and stumbles forward. Stanley stares back at him, stony-faced and inscrutable.

Stanley is sitting up in the single bed, fully dressed, even his shoes: a handsomely-made shirt of narrow blue pinstripes with a white collar, pinned down with braces.

“Is there anything you need, sir,” Stanley asks, his gaze already having turned away from James and to his own hands, held clasped in his lap. James thinks of all the times they have touched Will and never him, never him. 

“I’m not feeling well,” James slurs, his face splitting into a woozy grin.

“Close the door,” Stanley hisses with enormous irritation, and James does so. “I’m not here to provide schoolboy amusements.”

“I’m not a schoolboy,” James says. He had been until quite recently, but he sees no need to provide that intricate a level of detail. “I’m to go on an adventure. Malta, Greece, then on to Brazil. A sort of gap year; it’s all arranged. I shall miss Will terribly.”

“So you will have amusements to preoccupy you soon enough,” Stanley says. “That, second only to a good vocation, is the best prescription.”

Stanley can do no harm. James has been well taught, so he knows there’s an oath to say so.

He puts his hand over where he is hard under his trousers, feeling the wrongness of it in this small room, and still Stanley does not look at him. It’s humiliating. He can typically capture the attention of a room when telling some outlandish story, and had attracted some more insalubrious interest at school over his final couple of years, especially once he had grown his hair down to his collar. He tosses said hair from his eyes now, feeling the edges of the room pulse and spin as he does so, and makes a bitten-off plaintive whine.

He has his hand at himself for a long time. Stanley does not look James’s way. Neither does he stop him.

“I should like to be a hero of some sort one day,” James says with a sway of his body and a tremble to his voice, after he has at last grown tired of his unappreciated self-teasing and found his end in his own hand. “Like you.”

“Never call me a hero again,” Stanley says, and stays entirely silent until James leaves. Not even a slap to his wrist.


End file.
